Humans are emotional creatures. They respond to the emotions of events around them. Brands like Coca-Cola realize this, so they usually run ads around holidays relating their products to happiness.
However, you can’t just decide to create a campaign around happiness like Coca-Cola. You need to research and understand the emotions your audience will likely respond to. In this article, we are going to look into emotional advertising strategies.
What Is Emotional Marketing?
Also referred to as emotional advertising, this is the deliberate use of a persuasive marketing language that stirs emotions in consumers and, therefore, helps build relationships between brands and customers.
Brands use emotional marketing to make their audience take action, remember, share, and buy. This winning marketing strategy taps into emotions such as anger, happiness, fear, or sadness to make customers respond.
Key Statistics on Emotional Advertising
Here are statistics on emotional marketing you need to know about:
- Italians respond best to emotional marketing, with 65% responding to brands that use it.
- Emotional marketing has a success rate of 31%.
- 38% of campaigns that induce anger go viral.
- Consumers have two times the chance of sharing a post that drives emotions compared to another one that doesn’t.
- Headlines that use a negative superlative tend to perform better than others without it.
- Emotional advertisement is most effective in the banking sector, with 51% of customers responding well.
Why Is Emotional Advertising Effective?
If you are wondering if emotional advertisement works, here are some excellent reasons to use it.
Easy to connect with audiences
Think about it: When scrolling through Instagram, you are more likely to share a post that makes you smile, frustrated, extremely angry, etc. This is why fear-based marketing works. Similarly, products that ignite people’s emotions are easy to notice.
When you use emotional language, it becomes extremely easy for your audience to connect with your brand. When people can connect with your brand, it becomes easier for them to build a bond with it.
Offer a great first impression.
When you meet a person for the first time, the first thing you are likely to notice is the smile on their face or lack of it. Similarly, you are also likely to remember a brand that made you laugh or cry compared to another that just gave a bland message. Since the first impression forms in seconds, emotional marketing helps a brand create an excellent first impression.
Easy to remember.
Studies indicate that the part of the brain that processes emotions remembers things better than other parts. Therefore, when consumers look at your products or services, they will relate it with the emotions it helped stir.
Inspired action
How do customers engage with your brand? Emotional marketing can help inspire a purchase. This also encourages people to interact with your brand, inspiring sales.
Loyal customers
Emotions are usually very powerful. One emotion can have a long-lasting effect. You are more likely to remember the person who supported you during your lowest moments. This is the same thing with emotional marketing. When you show customers that you care about their emotions, this will likely remain in their minds for a long time.
Emotions Commonly Used in Emotional Marketing
Some of the emotions that brands often target are:
- Pride. Making consumers feel smart
- Greed. Make customers feel they will get more than they pay for.
- Belonging
- Happiness
- Guilt
- Surprise
- Anger
- Fear
- Affection, and many more
Top Tips On Emotional Marketing Success
To succeed in emotional advertising, follow these tips:
Understand your audience
To successfully appeal to your audience’s emotions, you need to understand them. Ask yourself questions such as:
- What tickles them?
- What are their fears?
- What are their pain points?
Once you answer these questions, you can create a message that responds to their fears. Remember that customers already have a perception of your brand depending on how they have interacted with it in the past. By understanding their emotional state, you can tailor your message so they can relate.
Tell a story
One of the easiest ways of connecting with an audience is by telling them a story. Ensure that the story is something that your audience can easily relate to. The story should be about a problem and how you solved it. It should also reflect your audience’s experience, struggle, and hopes.
You should also use powerful images and visuals in your story. You can share meaningful and engaging stories about your brand’s history, the challenges you faced trying to develop it, and its success.
Leverage on personalization
You need to show your customers that you care about them if they will purchase from you. You can do that by providing them with personalized content and messages. You should ensure your message is customized to meet your customer’s preferences.
This will help you create a solid emotional connection. It will, in turn, influence how they perceive your marketing efforts.
Choose the emotions to focus on
You must decide the emotions you want to evoke before crafting your message. Even though you may be tempted to evoke a range of emotions above, this may not work well. Instead, focus on one to three emotions. This will spur a powerful response from your target audience.
Use the color theory
Different colors convey different emotions. Choose your colors depending on the emotions you want to evoke. For instance, red is a color that evokes love, while blue evokes a feeling of power and masculinity. To positively impact your audience, you should understand the color theory.
Use social proof
People trust online reviews even if they are left by strangers. One of the ways in which you can touch a buyer’s emotions is by adding social proof on your site. On top of reviews, you can include case studies, testimonials, images of happy customers, and more.
FinalThoughts
Emotional marketing can help businesses gain customer trust, increasing their leads and sales. However, this can only be successful when used well. By understanding the above tips, you can easily use emotional marketing to grow your brand. On top of the above tips, remember that visual branding matters.
